Why Hire A Coach When This Blog is Free?

In case you missed the New Yorker piece nearly two years ago on retirement coaches, the New York Times just wrote about this trend, burgeoning as it is along with the Boomers. For those who are clueless, fretting, anxious, or downright scared about what to do with the rest of their lives, help is at hand. For a price, of course.
After all, the generation that looked to coaches to help pick the right camp and college for their kids; the generation that helped turn stock brokers into financial advisors; the generation (of women, at least) who sought consultants on what colors look best on them or how to organize their closets; this generation, so insecure about their decisions, needs hand-holding once again.
Or, at least that's what such advisors are telling them.
BUT WAIT!  What I've learned in interviewing people in transition for this blog is that most moving on from careers are doing really well on their own.
Need some free consulting?
Listen to how Wisty Rorabacher threw herself into volunteer work that actually created jobs for other people.
Or how a computer "whiz kid", who briefly became a "was kid," found meaning.
Or how Stuart Ditzen is pouring new-found hours into his passion.
Or how Sue Carson realized it was time to think about love.
All gratis.
Take the plunge. The thought of this transition is more scary than the reality.  Really.

Taking the Fork in the Road

 

               When you come to a fork….                    Courtesy fallforward.wordpress.com

If you had been a fly on the wall, listening to our discussion, you might have come away with this conclusion:

Finding a new path after leaving a longtime career is a bit like hiking in a forest with few trail markers -- and no GPS.

You know that any trail will take you through interesting scenery, but which one to choose? Walking through the forest with some buddies lends support to your decision. Also helpful is not worrying about the destination.

As they say, “It’s about the journey.”

Or as Yogi Berra said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Thirteen of us recently chewed over this transition issue, each sharing insights and experience.  Judy, a U.S. bankruptcy judge is retiring in five months and just getting over the “terror” of that prospect; Margit, an entrepreneur who loves running a small company is contemplating a different challenge; Sharon and Cece, who had full time jobs when our Project Renewment group first met, worked up the courage to drop to part-time; Essie, a hearing specialist, Tobi, a scientist; Jean, a business school instructor, and Barbara, who carries huge responsibility in a large non-profit, still love their work, but want a glimpse of what’s around the bend.

Three others (Carol, Carole and Shellie) left their careers years ago and have considerable experience if not expertise in what’s on the other side.

As for me, now two years out, I’m plunging ahead on many fronts – and feeling a bit lost in the woods.

On the pull of work, aka "I don't clean, cook, shop…."

Margit, for one, has never spent time at home and doesn’t relish the idea of doing so. “My whole life, I got up in the morning and went to work. I took a month off when I had my kids,” she said. “I do nothing around the house. I don’t clean, cook, shop, nothing. I never have. I get no enjoyment out of that. I don’t know what the next phase will look like…I need to figure out what will even appeal to me. I don’t know what I want.”

For Essie, Thanksgiving with 30 people reinforced her determination to keep working pretty much full time. “I was so glad to go back to work on Monday and it wasn’t because I was tired.” The holidays, she said, “were  a long time at home.” On the other hand, work offers  “a place to go. I have an excuse to be out of the house, to have a routine, to have this definition of time where I’m supposed to be somewhere and I don’t have to be home looking at all this sh--. That I don’t like to do. And I get paid for it. I like to get paid for what I do. What’s wrong with that?”

Yes, concurred Cece, “There’s security about being able to get up and go to the office.” At work, “you’re focused.”  

The prospect of losing that focus – and identity --  is what brought Judy, a bankruptcy judge who has “loved every minute of it” for 28 years, to our meeting.

“I am retiring May 16. Gulp. The terror I feel about getting up in the morning without getting dressed up and walking out the door,  I’ve sort of gotten over that, I think. I’m excited about prospects and certainly that’s why I’m here.” Still, she said, it’s about “your identity.”

“You’ve had a working life all these years and you’re intertwined with that.”

Why the fear of leaving work? 

 “We grew up thinking we had to push, we had to achieve,” said Marlyn, a  psychologist. What effect does that early conditioning have in terms of how we face the rest of our lives? The fear of not doing something. The fear of finding something that you think is really meaningful. I think you’re dealing with some really ingrained issues.”

Taking baby steps into the thicket

Said Sharon, a speech pathologist: “What really helped me the most was that I began thinking about the process.” Sharon decided she wanted to retire from the hospital where she worked, “but I didn’t want to retire from working. I loved what I did and felt that I had reached a certain level of experience and expertise and I wanted to keep doing it.” Through planning, she was able to piece together two days a week of work – one teaching and the other seeing patients. “I still feel that I’m contributing and doing something that I love, but I’m no longer rushing.”

Margit, the entrepreneur: “I think we’re talking about doing the kind of work that we find meaningful. A number of people here work in therapy type situations. They work one on one with individuals and their satisfaction is from helping a given individual. Others of us are helping a system or a community.” Either way, she said, satisfaction comes from being “in a

dynamic situation that’s alive and where you can play an important role.”

Still, the trick is to find the venue for that satisfaction. “It’s almost as if we want people to ‘show me THE road,’ but there isn’t one road.”

To quote my neighbor, Ellen, a later-age artist enjoying increasing success and too busy to come to the meeting: “Retiring is like job hunting. You have to go out and research it,” she said. “You network, you meet with people, you figure it out.  If anybody is sitting around feeling like there’s nothing to do, they’re not trying.”

Is there a roadmap? Or just blind turns? 

“Change is the new norm,” said Jean, a business school instructor. “So we can assume that we will not go forward on a straight trajectory, but we’re changing according to what our situation is at the time and maybe that won’t stop.”

Echoing the notion of change,  Margit said,
“I think we look at retirement as a time when we’re going to do The Thing, but maybe I’ll do something for two years and then I’ll lose interest in that and find something that excites me more. I like the idea of approaching it  like looking for a job. But reinventing yourself multiple times.”

Now, the conversation turned my previous blog about Wisty Rorabacher, a woman who transplanted herself from the Ozarks to Greenfield, Mass. Her walk in the woods – a fast-paced jog, actually -- was particularly exciting. Without a roadmap, she just put one foot in front of the other, quickly connecting with others, discovering needs and drawing on her skills and interests to serve her new community. “She didn’t have a roadmap,” I told the group. “It just evolved.”

“It’s scary not knowing what the road is,” said Sharon. “But if you’re kind of there and open to it, then other things come about that touch you and connect with you. You get into it.”

A slow walk or triathlon?

Pace is my particular challenge. ”You want to feel like retirement is the time when you have the time to do the things you really want to do, but then you don’t have the time to do them,” I said.

Quipped Carol K, reminiscing about her dream list. “I haven’t gotten to many of them. I thought I was going to be fluent in French.” Then, she noted that people are who they are. ”People who are over committed are constantly driven. It doesn’t matter if you’re employed or not.

Shellie loves the rushing. “I’m very happy being retired. Don’t ask me what I do, but I’m busy all the time. And I’m still rushing. Maybe it’s because I do too much, and that’s ok, too.”

On friending

The meeting ended in a kind of kumbaya – talking about the importance of  having each other, of having community at this stage of life.

For Shellie, that community is the Y, where she goes every day. “My volunteering is volunteering to be there for my friends and helping them through all the things they’re going through. Of course, they help me with the things I’m going through, too.”

Margit noted the loss of communities as we move on. “A lot of us have communities from our work and a lot of our friends are from our work, so whether or not we’re moving geographically, [when we leave work] we’re suddenly in another city. It’s called the City of Retired. And we have to figure it out.”

And for Barb, who works with many older people in her non-profit, the value of women’s friendship is “clearer and clearer” as she grows older.

“So many people come to the center where they create new groups. Much to their shock and surprise, they find they’re able to make meaningful relationships at any age.”

What are your concerns? What have you learned along your path that you can share with others.

(For previous posts on our Project Renewment meetings, google "Project Renewment" and "UnRetiring")

On Her Tractor: Wisty Sows New Jobs

Wisty Rorabacher: Working to create work

At a children's Halloween party in Northampton, Mass, the only two women of a certain age gravitate towards each other.

I like how Wisty Rorabacher is dressed – plaid shirt, corduroy overalls and a brown tweed  British newsboy cap. Our conversation is as relaxed – and as surprising – as she looks. Because Wisty has accomplished something in her so-called retirement that, in two years of interviewing people,  I had not found:

Wisty has created jobs. She puts a lie to the idea that older people are draining the nation financially and taking jobs from the young. In fact, she’s done the opposite. How?

Six years ago, Wisty found herself, like a lot of retired people, moving to be closer to a son and daughter-in-law. She and her longtime partner arrived in Greenfield, Mass. from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, with no jobs, no friends, no history, no connections.

 “Part of it was, I just retired. I don’t have 20 years to slowly make friends.  I had to hit the pavement. And I decide I’m going to do something, right here, right now. I really wanted to work on being physically healthy. So I joined the Y and worked out three hours, three days a week there. You gain friends in the locker room. Women didn’t used to do that, But you get your locker room friends. So there were those people.

“I really wanted to get involved in the community.” Greenfield “is like 18,000 people and if you want to get involved, you get involved. One of the things I read about Greenfield before I moved was that there was a national sustainable energy organization. I called them up and said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll help out.’

Plowing Greenfield's community garden

“They had some gardens in their solar park. They needed someone to work those gardens. I had just come off the land in Arkansas. I know how to garden and I missed it. So they gave me the best gift and they were thrilled to find somebody who felt good about doing that.”

“Meanwhile,” she continued, “I was meeting all these people in the sustainable energy community. So I got onto some committees on energy.  One thing led to another and it was real easy to start an identity from being active in that community.”

Soon, she was helping to pull in federal and state grant money and large donations for the community farm to sustain open space and grow crops for local residents.  Low-income families pay just $5 a week. And she was garnering press for Greenfield Community Garden, driving a tractor, plowing 20 acres of the 60-acre tract that she’d helped preserve in perpetuity. Suddenly, there were jobs to be filled: a full time farmer, a full time person who does education, an executive director and assistant director to oversee media and volunteer work. Others are hired seasonally, including an apprentice who helps weed and harvest and work in the farmers market.

If that weren’t enough, Wisty, who spent her career in education – teaching special ed and early childhood education in Minnesota and then gifted students in Arkansas--also is creating jobs in the Greenfield public schools.

In a permaculture gardening class, she met a woman who wanted to get YMCA members to volunteer in the public schools. “Nancy said, ‘How bout if we work together on it?’ Wisty recalled.  “So we made a proposal; the superintendent liked it and asked us to run with it, so we did. It quickly became apparent that we needed to hire somebody” to coordinate the volunteers.

“It was one of those things in a smallish community, if you see a need and you can show that you’re reliable,  responsible, you’re gonna follow through, then people will give you leeway. And it happened.”

Next for Wisty:  Her work to tie the community farm program into the schools, with students coming out to the farm and educational programs, got her doing some research. She found that none of the agricultural courses in the state’s tech or vocational schools focused on small organic farming, despite growing demand. She’s now intent on creating such a program with the high school.

“If that happens, “ she says, “it will open up more jobs.”

Wisty told me all this because I asked. She doesn’t usually wear her accomplishments on her overalls that way, even though those who’ve left careers often yearn to be acknowledged.

“One of the things that I learned to treasure,” she says, “ is to just walk around with that knowledge myself. Maybe nobody else has a clue about [what I’m doing] but it’s like part of the whole of me. You know what I mean?”